When it comes to clothes, Justin Bieber is something of an abstract expressionist. Garments are his medium, and the pop star bends and warps them using all sorts of unconventional techniques. One of his several non-musical talents is his knack for sweatsuit acrobatics; in his haphazard hands, a hoodie or a pair of jeans becomes malleable. In other words, Bieber treats clothes the way Jackson Pollock treated paint: pliably.
This week, JB debuted a new and unusual casual outfit concept—familiar in its eccentricity yet dynamic in its proportions. Out to lunch at the Australian-style cafe Great White in West Hollywood, the musician wore an oat-toned hoodie, a black Atlanta Braves cap, and paw-shaped Louis Vuitton slippers designed by Pharrell Williams.
He also donned, bafflingly, two pairs of Balenciaga sweatpants: an exterior pair embroidered with the brand’s logo in cobalt blue, which he’s worn before, and an interior pair, which featured a logo patch in the style of Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign emblem. Two pairs of baggy gray sweatpants—just one on top of the other!
In the evening, the singer brought his pantalon de deux to the celebrity hot spot Sushi Park where he dined with Cole Bennett, his pal and frequent collaborator. Bennett, who founded the multimedia company Lyrical Lemonade, was also wearing a curious pair of pants: khaki cargos with the flap pockets positioned just above the knees, rather than on the sides. It was an impromptu Strange Pants Summit—and heaven knows this isn’t the first time Sushi Park has hosted one, either.
Bieber’s styling here looks straight out of a Balenciaga lookbook, where confusing pants abound. And while Balenciaga does make its own trompe l’oeil gray sweats whose elastic waistbands feature a sewn-in panel made to look like exposed plaid boxer shorts, the doubling up here is pure Bieber DIY.
Indeed, we’ve seen several feats of waistband layering lately, chief among them being a six-way parlay from A$AP Rocky, who wore what appeared to be two pairs of pants and four pairs of plaid boxers while performing alongside Tyler, the Creator at Coachella this past weekend. To think we’ve spent all this time lately debating if pants should be big or small, when they really could just be duplicitous.
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